An article fabricated on a production line may be inspected for certain features, including defects that might degrade the performance of the article or a system including the article. For example, a hard disk for a hard disk drive may be fabricated on a production line and inspected for certain surface features, including surface and subsurface defects that might degrade the performance of the disk or the hard disk drive. In some instances, inspection may be carried out with the use of an imaging apparatus that includes a camera and a light source to illuminate the article while the camera records images of the article. In such arrangements, it is appreciated that the light source may illuminate the article with randomly polarized light, and/or light polarized through a polarization filter, with insufficient intensity, which may result in some defects going undetected and consequently affect the performance of the article and/or a system including the article.